Does Scripture identify the ethnicity of the Antichrist?
A viewer relays competing claims that Scripture identifies the ethnicity of the Antichrist as either Jewish or Roman, and asks whether Scripture actually gives us this information.
Answer
No, Scripture does not give the ethnicity. The term antichristos is used four times in John's Epistles, prompted by a heretic named Cerinthus around 80 AD who denied that Jesus is God, which is why John repeatedly says whoever denies Jesus is God is of the antichrist, and speaks of a future Antichrist to come. Second Thessalonians 2 separately calls him the man of sin or man of iniquity, and we assume he is the same figure. But nowhere is his ethnicity stated. That said, about half a dozen Fathers guessed he would be Jewish, and that is not a bad guess, because the Jews at large, apart from the remnant who believed, were the chief antagonists of Christ at His first coming, as the book of Acts shows almost chapter by chapter, and 1 Thessalonians 2:14 lays the death of Christ at the door of the Jews of that century. So it makes sense they would lead the apostasy and the Antichrist movement at the second coming as well, more so than a Roman or Russian figure. But that is inference from the Fathers, not a statement of Scripture.